Kre8tif! Confab Attracts Digiterati to Kuala Lumpur

The inaugural edition of MSC Malaysia’s Kre8tif! Digital Content Conference held last week in Kuala Lumpur (Dec. 7-9) attracted over 600 attendees and top animation and vfx heavyweights such as Marvel Animation president Eric Rollman and Kung Fu Panda director John Stevenson. Sponsored by the country’s Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), the event featured various panels about the state of the industry as well as more technical master classes and case studies involving Maya, Mental Ray and NVIDIA.

Program highlights included a keynote by Dr. Naif Muttawa who discussed the challenges and rewards of creating The 99, his comic-book property and soon-to-be-released animated series (produced by Endemol) which centers on a group of superheroes inspired by Islamic archetypes. Execs from some of the region’s top animation studios ‘ Vaibhov Kumaresh, founder of Vaibhov Studio (India); Tony Sealy of Intense Animation Studio (Singapore), John C. Wong of Dream Tube Entertainment (China), and C.J. See of Inspidea (Malaysia) discussed the ins and outs of growing a studio from the ground up in an informative panel moderated by Animation Xpress editor Anand Gurnani.

David Abramowitz, creator of the Highlander TV series and the upcoming animated feature War of the Worlds: Goliath shared his thoughts on the essentials of storytelling for TV shows and movies. Isaac Kerlow, author of the popular book, The Art of 3D Computer Animation Effects and fest director of the 2010 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival, was also on hand to talk about the state of CG animation and vfx.

Malaysian studio Les’ Copaque managing director Hj Burhanuddin Md Radzi discussed the making of his studio’s blockbuster animated feature Geng: Pengembaraan Bermula, which has become the country’s second highest-grossing movie of all time and spawned a sequel and a popular TV series Upin and Ipin. Animation Magazine also presented the attendees with a look ahead at some of the highlights of the coming year in films, TV and online animation. For more info about this event, visit www.facebook.com/kre8tif.